Has the Government Declared War on Religious Liberty?

The chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights says that religious liberty is a code word for bigotry and Christian supremacy, in a government report released Thursday.

Martin R. Castro, whom President Obama appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 2011, remarked in a 307-page report titled Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties, wrote that "the phrases 'religious liberty' and 'religious freedom' will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance."

Although a majority of commissioners voted with him, his opinion is hotly disputed.

In a Friday interview with The Christian Post, Brian Walsh, president of the Washington-based Civil Rights Research Center, said "the majority's report is yet another extreme claim that the civil rights and liberties that religious Americans of all faiths have long enjoyed must be eliminated or restricted to accommodate new and emerging rights."